


Not Tonight, Darling

by bigOwlEngery (Hecatetheviolet)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: ...i think, Ace Subtype: sex repulsed but horny and dating georgie barker, Canon Asexual Character, Canon Compliant, Classic literature allusions, Clothed Sex, Consent Play, Enthusiastic Consent, F/M, Georgie Gets Lost In The Sauce, Georgie's Lost Fear, Kiss Repulsion, Sex-Repulsed Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Sexual Tension, and associated trauma, being horny at ur ace boyfriend, extremely asexual sex, look me in the eye and tell me jon wasnt a theatre kid in college, mentioned wtgfs at the end, ridiculous purple prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:21:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26465596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecatetheviolet/pseuds/bigOwlEngery
Summary: Jon doesn’t.It’s such an innocuous phrase on its own. Two simple words that can carry an entire world of meaning within them. Georgie thought them into being second: the call and response of internal understanding stemming from a quietI don’tand melting into an equally silentJon doesn’twith unpracticed, unexpected ease.The concept of a negation so simple in theory but so fantastic in reality:no.
Relationships: Georgie Barker/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 7
Kudos: 68





	Not Tonight, Darling

_Jon doesn’t._

It’s such an innocuous phrase on its own. Two simple words that can carry an entire world of meaning within them. Georgie thought them into being second: the call and response of internal understanding stemming from a quiet _I don’t_ and melting into an equally silent _Jon doesn’t_ with unpracticed, unexpected ease.

The near Regency vagueness of it fits him well. The hush of it. An innocent phrase turned sexual, tumbled from mouths behind spread fans. White gloved secrets spilling out. The tap of a cane on tile. The turn of an exposed ankle. The scandal of it. The concept of a negation so simple in theory but so fantastic in reality: _no_.

It bears a shocking amount of weight: Georgie has never been asked to carry something so heavy. Recently, she had a great weight cut free from her mind. Taking up the yolk of something new fills a bit of the chasm left behind.

Well, so much less a task and more of a conversation, continually ongoing, starting here: _hey, Jon, do you want to have sex?_ A book of pristine pages closing lightly, parted around a marking finger at the spine. A tender negation, new and strangely soft in the near dark. Words, more of them. The ones that mattered then and later and later and later: _I don’t_.

But _not that_ is also a question. _Not for me_ begs _then what_. It opens a hallway where it shuts a door. Georgie takes her time exploring the strange house she’s found herself in. Entered expecting a bedroom, only to find a parlor. A sitting room. The wallpaper is so different than her own home, the architecture strange in its foreign beauty. Deep shelves of impassive books where she keeps her TV stand, cool tile where rugs usually go, a table set for one. A lawn of lush grass and earth and wind where every other house Georgie has ever visited had kept a well, a lake, a pool; her own leads to the ocean.

There is nothing for her to drink, in Jon. So she learns how to navigate his space. Shoes off at the entrance. Knock quietly at the door. Sit together, and -

“Oh, got me alone in the parlor without a chaperone, have you, Mr. Sims?”

\- tease.

It’s grown familiar, soft. An unasked question with an obvious answer. A game. Routine as lunch, teatime, supper, bed. Close the curtains. Georgie, leaning in, spilling some of her ocean on his clean floors, to peck his temple or a thin wrist or a shoulder blade - but no further. No deeper. Jon has a mop and is willing to use it. Can banish her to his barren lawn with the flick of a wrist. A hand at her sternum, a smiling, chiding sigh of _Georgie_ on his unkissed lips. Too well-bred for an eye roll, too sensible to be annoyed with her play. Act 4,678 scene 5 line 1 “No.”

But not today. Maybe today they are in the greenhouse, hot, humid; or a sunporch with a pitcher of dripping cold water between them. Today, a book is held over a virgin mouth in barrier and dark, dark eyes consider Georgie with all the weight of _I don’t._

 _No. No thank you. Not today. No, never. I don’t like it. I don’t. No._ Negation, conversation, compromise on the horizon. Today, his lips are revealed slowly when he says:

“Why, Miss Barker, I’m surprised. Are you that concerned for your virtue? I assure you, I am an honest man,” A joke.

“Really, now, Mr. Sims. I’ll have to ask you to prove yourself to me before I can believe you have honorable intentions,” A joke.

“Oh? How so?” A joke.

“Kiss me.” Punchline. Same as each turn of the calendar before. Not waiting, not expecting, but doing something like both. Wondering where the line is. What might come of it.

“Hm? Oh. Don’t move.” Says Jon.

Jon does not command. Suggests, cajoles, condescends; not this. This - Georgie goes still. Breath punched out of her.

The lounge chair dips gently between Georgie’s thighs under the weight of the book, then further under the weight of Jon’s knee. Brushes, gently, against her inseam. If he were any other man, it would be on purpose. If Georgie were with any other man, the faint touch of the pages of a thin philosophy book on her leg wouldn’t be a tease. Wouldn’t feel like part of a scene.

The rest of the improv act plays out as such:

Georgie cannot blink; Georgie cannot breathe. Jon’s dark eyes swallow her vision whole as he draws close. Jon’s dark hands swallow her cheeks as he cradles her face. It’s hot. He runs hot like something is on fire in him. All the water burned out. This is it: a light pressure on her leg, on her jaw, and the weight of his dull, bright stare as he considers her closely.

His hands move, nothing more than a light, dry brush over her cheekbones, under her jaw, burning wrists near her throat: and this is a play Georgie has seen before, this part, but a second act has just parted the curtains and she is riveted in her seat. Jon’s thumbs press softly against her lips. Georgie swallows, hardly breathes, waits. Heart pounding.

Whatever test Jon was running against her, she has passed. In her stillness, her joyful stillness, her _not_. He leans in, head tipping, hair spilling, eyes fluttering shut, and Georgie moans helplessly at the absolute warm of his breath, the pressure of his mouth bare centimeters from hers. Georgie, cradled in a golden cage and begging for a drop of water on her tongue finds it to be enough to drown in. Her palate is wet, glistening.

She wants more. Is held steady, perfect. Niobe, dripping wet. But the play is Hamlet, as always.

A small eternity; Jon draws back. Georgie follows, silently gasping her own negation. He laughs, just a bit, as breathless as she. The usual response to her question, but. But this. A _no_. An _I don’t_. A _Jon doesn’t_ to end all _Jon doesn’t_ s because he does not kiss Georgie, but he steals her breath and leaves her panting with little shocks of pleasure and delight all the same.

“Good enough for you?” He breathes, teasing Georgie with - with everything. Pressure on her mouth. Dragging down her bottom lip. The scent of his skin going rough down her throat. Liquid heat pooling in her mouth to match the drought of his eyes.

“Yes,” Georgie breathes back. The familiar incantation of affirmations that spill from under her doorways at odd hours of the night. When Jon visits. She’s drowning. “Yes.”

“Good,” He says primly, and _that’s_ a tease. A real one. He releases Georgie tenderly, a fallen baby bird cajoled into flight, and draws back. Retrieves the book from between their legs. Smiles at her, eyes dark and smug and teasing. Opens to page 53 and continues reading while Georgie gasps, beached on the lounge beside him, his hand hot on her knee.

The dance continues.

Georgie is surprised by the weight of a single stage kiss. How it lingers. How it burns. Sometimes, she offers Jon her elbow - _such a gentleman, Miss Barker_ \- and goes to tease, as she is want to do, but the parting of her lips and the draw of her breath pulls the memory to the surface as surely as fishhooks and she falters. This is a script that only Jon can read, a dance he controls the pace of, for all that she’s so certain she leads them, knows the steps better, can hear the melody Jon is deaf to.

Swallows the memory. Drowns quietly as she asks, hushed and honest and more desperate than she should be for anything less than air,

“Jon, will you have sex with me?”

His smile. His eyes. His _no_. Somehow, it only serves to whet her appetite for it, rather than rebuke her. Mr. Darcy. Petruchio. Georgie Barker.

She’s only asked him for sex two times, but with the suggestion of his kiss burning her mouth, at the third she comes close to begging.

And it is a want; an affirmation, a confirmation, a plea. But now Georgie knows that Jon speaks a language that she doesn’t have the key for, but can whisper it into her ears just as easily as French or Arabic or the Queen’s perfect English. She’s thirsty for more. To sit through a familiar play in a foreign language, to be surprised in the last act, to be held captive by the climax of something she can’t understand.

And, it’s odd, but his _no_ sounds an awful lot like:

“Don’t move.”

Georgie doesn’t.

Jon’s body heat suffocates her, parches her throat beyond speech, as he leans over her to turn off the light. The _click_ of it is deafening in the sudden darkness. The shift of his body. The dull thump of a book set aside. The slide of cool sheets.

Silence.

The curtain rises.

Georgie actually gasps out loud when his knees pull down the mattress on either side of her hips. Her eyes strain to find him by anything other than his dry heat in the dark. She holds still. Doesn’t move. _Doesn’t._

It’s like fear, it’s so intense. A half-hidden figure at the end of her bed, holding her paralyzed. Dizzy. Is Georgie dreaming? Is this what fear used to feel like? Pounding heart, gathering sweat, a desperate expectation, Jon? Georgie’s house had a full wing burned out of it, but she thinks that Jon might be standing on those soot soaked boards. The faintest hint of his cigarette smoke finds her. It makes her thirst swell painfully.

He settles slowly on her hips. Full weight, one leg off the bed, anchoring. The thrust she gives at the pressure is more instinct than thought. A twitch of desperation.

One of his hands finds her heaving ribs, makes her gasp with the sudden touch. Stillness. Silence. His body rises. His hand rises, smoothing over her torso, up her shoulder, down her arm. Takes her hand. Brings it in, down. Sets it between her legs, curls her fingers neatly into the seam of her soft sleep shorts, the seam of her body. She jolts, touches, flinches, freezes.

“Jon,” She croaks, her voice drying up as she breathes in his heat. Shakes with tiny jolting twitches at the sudden pressure on her clit. Jon tucks his head close to hers, brushes his lips against her ear, her neck, asks:

“Good, Georgie?”

“Please,” She gasps, “Please touch me,”

And she wants to hear _no_. Wants to follow the endnote on that word to the back of the book and find the phrase _not your way_. Wants to look that up in the dictionary on his shelf and find pages and pages and pages of what he could do to her instead.

 _Jon doesn’t_ , not sex, but the gaping mystery of what has taken its place is a wide one, and Georgie wants to take that plunge. Savor each discovery. Keep each new find in a curio box. Treasure, for her.

“I am,” He whispers back. “I’m holding your hand, Georgie. Isn’t that enough for you?”

Georgie sobs out a moan, digs her fingers in deep. No, no it’s not, but yes, yes it is. Neurons are firing, tension gathered cloyingly in the quiet dark. Georgie’s skin is pulled tight, fit to burst. But above her, lying lightly on her body, Jon is still. Quiet. Breaths even. His heart is quick, but it’s reached its peak at half-time; Georgie’s thunders at allegrissimo.

She might die of it.

She wants to be afraid of it.

Her eyes are adjusting, and there is only the outline of sex. Two bodies pressed tight together in the little bed, stacked like cards. Dark. The odd strands of silver in Jon’s unbound curls glint in the faint moonlight, backlit like a halo.

His other hand slides up her body, smooths around her throat, tangles firmly in her hair. A trail of heat leading nowhere in particular. But then his full weight rests on her as he leans in close enough to taste. Brushes her cheek with his mouth, ghosts so close to her own - pushes on her hand, a thrust, and Georgie jolts with it. Twitches, lunges - and the firm hand in her hair holds her steady. Pins her to the bed more thoroughly than the rest of his entire body. Holds her in a terrible limbo, millimeters from what she wants, what she thought she needed, gasps coming painfully, rapturously close to a kiss.

But _Jon doesn’t_.

Instead, he holds her still, what she needs most in the entire world dangled like a lure just out of her reach, hot air between their mouths, her hand between his and her body, and it drives Georgie to heights she thought could only be reached by _doing._

Then: a kiss is ghosted over her cheek, a firm thrust overwhelms her, and Jon pulls back. Sits upon her lap. Keeps her hair, tugs firmly, and Georgie’s eyes roll with it. Her legs twitch painfully with pleasure. Every part of her that had been allowed to touch him burns cold. The air that isn’t from Jon’s mouth is ice, and her body prickles with goosebumps in a fierce wave of sensation. His hips rest against her own, trapping her arm, and his fingers tangle with hers, forcing her to palm over her clit instead. It throbs with her pounding heart, the psuedo fear-rhythm of sex - of not-sex, of not being touched but for a chaste hand over hers, a steady hold on her hair. A banked line of fire over her hips. Controlled demolition.

And then, he leaves her.

And that, too, the sight of him, moon-dark and mysterious, leaving her hips, bringing one leg over her body, the collapse of his body beside hers, is. It’s good. It’s so good. Everywhere he touched her and didn’t touch her is trembling in the shock of cold his absence leaves in its wake. Her nipples are painfully tight. The silvered halo of his hair fills the edge of her vision. His heat is close enough to imagine the pain of being burned. Georgie twists her bereft, cold hand and comes and comes and comes.

A kiss at her temple. Dry. Benediction. She heaves for breath.

“Good?” Jon asks.

“Yes,” She sobs. Yes, she likes not having sex with Jon.

-

“...What do you mean ‘he doesn’t’? Georgie?” Melanie is asking, confused. A modern woman. Her ghosts have guns, her rebels cameras. Every corner of her home is cleanly lit, save for the locked rooms. Pool in the back.

“I…” Georgie starts but cannot finish. Her tongue curls in her mouth, suddenly dry. She clears her throat and picks up her tea again. “I mean that we never had sex, when we dated.”

“Oh. Huh. Why not, if you don’t mind me asking?”

All the old, familiar poetry dies on Georgie’s lips. They no longer sting like starlight. She locked the door to Jon’s place and turned in her key years ago. Put away the trinkets and the dull coal that went cold without his fire to keep it bright, drying out her lungs.

Too bad he went and became a ghost; left her house haunted by his memory.

Georgie wets her tongue and with all the careful, curated clandestine vagueness that Jon deserves, says:

“Jon doesn’t.”

But Georgie does. And Melanie does.

Georgie hasn't been left thirsty, since Melanie entered her parlor. She's still learning how to swim.

**Author's Note:**

> have i convinced u that i know what sex is yet? im 100% repulsed, so i imagine it is just being horny but like pointely??? idk idk idk happy ace awareness month, have weird non-sexual sexual relations yall


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